November 11, 1914, was another day of severe fighting. At daybreak the Germans opened fire on the allied trenches to the north and south of the road from Menin to Ypres. After a furious artillery fire the Germans drove their men forward in full force. This attack was carried out by the First and Fourth brigades of the Prussian Guard Corps which had been especially selected to capture Ypres if possible, since that task had proved too heavy for the infantry of the line. As the Germans surged forward they were met by a frontal fire from the allied lines, and as they were moving diagonally across part of the allied front, they were also attacked on the flank by the English artillery. Though the casualties of the Germans were enormous before they reached the English lines, such was their strength and the momentum of the mass that, in spite of the splendid resistance of the English troops, the Germans succeeded in breaking through the allied lines in several places near the road. They penetrated some distance into the woods behind the English trenches, where some of the bloodiest fighting of the entire war took place. On November 12, 1914, comparative quiet reigned and with the exception of artillery duels and some desultory fighting no results were obtained on either side. The British report makes this comment on this attempt upon Ypres: "Their (the Prussian Guard Corps') dogged perseverance in pursuance of their objective claims admiration. "The failure of one great attack, heralded as it was by an impassioned appeal to the troops made in the presence of the emperor himself, but carried out by partially trained men, has been only the signal for another desperate effort in which the place of honor was assigned to the corps d'elite of the German army. "It must be admitted that the Guard Corps has retained that reputation for courage and contempt of death which it earned in 1870, when Emperor William I, after the battle of Gravelotte, wrote: 'My Guard has formed its grave in front of St. Privat,' and the swarms of men who came up bravely to the British rifles in the woods around Ypres repeated the tactics of forty-four years ago, when their dense columns, toiling up the slopes of St. Privat, melted away under the fire of the French." Ypres was now but a name. Nothing but a mass of ruins reminded the world of its previous quaint splendor. For Ypres had been rich in historic buildings and monuments of past days.